Sir, - Mary-Anne Bartlett, director of Compassion in World Farming, laments the castigation of her movement as anti-farmer and anti-countryside (September 9th).Time was when Christianity was seen - and rightly so - in a similar light. Early in the second century the Roman Governor of the province of Bithynia in Asia Minor wrote to the Emperor Trajan about problems confronting him. Among them was a slump in agricultural markets because people were no longer buying beasts for sacrifice as they should.It was all the fault, so his informants said, of some people called "Christians", who had formed a secret society which could be up to no good, and who were certainly disloyal to the empire, since they refused to offer sacrifice to the god-emperor.Legend has it that farmers filled the circuses to cheer the lions as they tore Christians apart, and that many of them, seeking an alternative enterprise, took to trapping lions, tigers, leopards, etc., and selling them to the circuses.Did not Christ literally sign his death warrant when he made a whip and drove the marketeers, their beasts, birds and bureaux de change from the Temple?Is it an exaggeration to say that "agribusiness" has played no small part in making a tragicomedy of Christianity? - Yours, etc.,Richard Power,Ballyneety,Co. Limerick.